Beyond the Board Skills Matrix

For many boards, the skills matrix is a familiar annual exercise: confirm the experience around the table, satisfy disclosure requirements and demonstrate to investors or other stakeholders that the board has the capabilities it needs.

But when the objective is succession planning, a more in-depth analysis of the board’s collective capabilities—and how well they align with the company’s future needs—can reveal much more.

Rather than simply documenting which skills are represented, this kind of analysis opens up a different set of questions: Where are we genuinely strong? Where might our capabilities be thinner than they appear? Which expertise will matter most to the strategy ahead? How well represented is it across the board? And what might that mean for succession?

That requires looking beyond the public-facing matrix. An analysis intended to inform succession can examine not only whether a capability is present, but how deep it is, how well represented it is across the board, how important it will be to the company’s future, and where the most consequential gaps may lie.

Five questions are particularly useful in taking that deeper look:

• Are we assessing the capabilities that matter most to this company? The relevant expertise will depend on the company’s strategy, regulatory environment, growth priorities and expected industry change.
• When we use the same label, do we mean the same thing? “Technology,” “international” or “strategy” can encompass very different kinds of experience.
• Do we distinguish between experience, coverage and importance? Having a skill somewhere on the board is different from having enough of it—and neither tells us how important that capability will be.
• What sits behind a claim of expertise? Depth, recency and the experience behind a rating can reveal considerably more than a simple yes/no.
• Which gaps actually matter? Not every gap warrants action. The more consequential question is which ones could influence succession, recruitment and future committee composition.

Taken together, these questions offer a way to look beyond what is represented on the board today and consider how well its collective capabilities align with what the company may need tomorrow.

1. Are we assessing the capabilities that matter most to this company?

Most board skills matrices include a familiar collection of capabilities: finance, industry experience, technology, international business, human capital, marketing and so on.

Those categories may all be relevant. But the priorities can look very different depending on the company itself.

What does its strategy require? Where is it expecting to grow? What changes are taking place in its industry? Which regulatory or market developments could materially alter the demands placed on the board?

The answers may produce a very different set of priorities for a global pharmaceutical company than for a regional bank or a technology company entering a new phase of growth.

A strategic skills analysis can therefore go beyond a preselected list of generic capabilities, with a framework that reflects the organization the board actually oversees.

Peer context can add another perspective. Looking at the capabilities emphasized by a relevant group of comparable boards can surface expertise worth considering—or reinforce why certain capabilities deserve greater attention.

That suggests a useful question before looking at who has which skills:

What expertise is most relevant for this board to assess in the first place?

2. When we use the same label, do we mean the same thing?

Even once the relevant capabilities have been identified, seemingly straightforward labels can conceal considerable ambiguity.

Take “Technology.”

One director may interpret that as experience leading a technology company. Another may think about enterprise technology transformation. Another may include responsibility for cybersecurity, digital commerce or data. All could reasonably claim technology experience while talking about quite different things.

The more interesting question may be whether everyone around the table means the same thing when they check the box.

Defining each capability clearly creates a more consistent basis for directors to assess their experience without constraining how they think about it. Otherwise, the board may be comparing answers to subtly different questions.

A private skills analysis also creates room to go beyond whether a director has experience and explore what that experience actually represents.

3. Do we distinguish between experience, coverage and importance?

A traditional matrix often answers a relatively simple question:

Who has this skill?

For succession planning, there may be more useful information beneath that checkmark.

Three questions begin to reveal it.

First, how much experience does each director have? Some exposure to an area is different from deep operating expertise.

Second, how well covered is the board collectively? A capability may technically be present while directors nevertheless see a need for greater depth.

Third, how important is the capability? Not every gap carries the same significance for the company or its strategy.

Consider a board whose matrix shows four directors with cybersecurity experience. On paper, that may look reassuring.

But imagine that cybersecurity is considered critical to the company’s next three years; only one of those directors has deep, recent operating experience; the board collectively believes its coverage is insufficient; and the director with the greatest expertise is approaching the end of their expected service horizon.

The same four checkmarks now tell a very different story.

Experience, coverage and importance therefore tell a more useful story when considered together. A capability can be important but well covered. It can be thinly represented but relatively unimportant to the strategy. Or it can be both critical and insufficiently represented.

The most interesting gaps are not necessarily all the gaps. They are the ones that matter most.

4. What sits behind a claim of expertise?

Even when a capability is clearly represented, another question remains: what sits behind the rating?

Consider two directors who both identify technology as an area of deep experience.

One may be a current operator responsible for deploying AI across a global enterprise. Another may have led a significant technology transformation earlier in their career. Both legitimately have technology experience. But that doesn’t make their expertise interchangeable—or equally relevant to the decisions a particular company faces today.

The same applies to categories such as international business, operations, cybersecurity, marketing or strategy.

This is where qualitative context becomes useful.

If a director identifies deep or advanced expertise in an area, understanding the experience behind that assessment adds another dimension: where the expertise was acquired, how substantial the responsibility was, when it was last exercised and how closely it maps to the company’s current and future needs.

Recency doesn’t matter equally for every capability. Judgment, leadership experience, industry knowledge and experience navigating economic cycles can become more valuable over time. Technology, cybersecurity, digital commerce, AI and aspects of regulation can move very differently.

The point isn’t to challenge accomplished directors’ credentials. It is to understand the substance behind the rating.

5. Which gaps actually matter?

This is where a deeper analysis of board capabilities can become particularly useful for succession planning.

The objective isn’t to maximize the number of boxes checked. Nor is it to create a board with a little of every conceivable capability.

The more consequential question is:

Does the collective expertise of this particular board align with what this particular company needs now—and where it is going next?

If international expansion is central to the strategy, international experience may deserve greater weight. If the business is undergoing fundamental technological transformation, another capability may move rapidly up the list. If an area that once dominated the company’s strategy has become less important, deep expertise there may remain a strength—but not necessarily a priority for the next director search.

And skills are only part of the composition picture.

Expected service horizons can provide a view into when expertise may leave the board. Committee membership and leadership can surface where succession needs may emerge within the board’s structure. Current or recent operating roles, independence, demographics and other relevant composition information can add further context depending on the board’s priorities.

Together, those inputs can turn an analysis of board capabilities into something more useful than a snapshot of the board today: a basis for thinking about succession, recruitment and future committee composition.

From understanding the board today to planning for tomorrow

The traditional skills matrix and a deeper, private analysis of board capabilities serve different purposes.

One helps the board communicate its experience externally.

The other creates space to look inward: to consider the capabilities that matter to this particular company, understand how much relevant experience sits around the table, assess how well those capabilities are represented, determine which matter most, and identify the gaps that may deserve attention.

The most useful analyses can tell a board something it didn’t already know—and provide a clearer basis for thinking about what comes next.

But getting a clearer view of the board today and what may be needed tomorrow is only the first step.

The harder question is how to close the distance between the two when most of the directors around the table aren’t going anywhere next Tuesday.

That is the question we explore in “Building Board Expertise for What Comes Next”

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